


Business

by Ishti



Category: Aveyond
Genre: Aveyond 2, Aveyond: Ean's Quest, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, minor headcanon dump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12850680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishti/pseuds/Ishti
Summary: As promised, Ava takes Nicolas to see the world, and Gavin tags along.





	Business

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on the Aveyond forums for the autumn guild event.

"Please don't touch that."

Ava flicked Nicolas' hand off of the winch. He sighed dramatically.

"Ava, I am  _bored."_

"Congratulations. Did I miss the part where that means you should mess up my ship?"

"Can't it go any faster? We've been on the ocean for weeks!"

"Five days. And no, she can't. Lay off her, twinkle-talons; she's got feelings, too."

Nicolas glared back at the winch he'd been inspecting and absently ran his manicured nails down his cheek. What a waste of time this sailing business was! If only they had another of those flying crafts, like the one the squirrels made. He had babies to kiss, small businessmen to charm, and entire continents to peruse. Continents. Land. Solid land, larger than one hundred and fifty feet across and not made almost entirely of oak.

"Don't tell me you haven't been having a good time on our little cruise," Ava lectured. "I know perfectly well what you and Gavin have been up to in the forecastle when you think no one is listening."

Nicolas' pale skin blossomed into an unsightly red. "You don't... know that," he retorted weakly.

She laughed. "Honey, everyone knows that."

He was as red as Gavin's hair now, his head spinning a little, anchored only by the weight of his circlet. "Well... it's not as if there's much else to do! And... it's not... boring."  _Oh, gods; why am I admitting this?_

"What's not boring?"

Nicolas jumped, the skin nearly shivering right off his shoulders as Gavin appeared behind him. "Gavin!" he yelped.

"No, I'm certainly not," he said in that deep, mellow voice of his. "What's the matter? Royal dogmatism a little too mundane without any warlock scum around to shake it up?"

It was all too easy for Gavin to jolt Nicolas out of his head and into the offensive. "Hardly. I can always count on you to bring the contrariety."

Nicolas didn't turn around, but he could practically feel the dung-eating grin spread across Gavin's face. He wouldn't admit that just  _picturing_  that grin made something hot well up inside him.

Ava clasped her hands by her cheek. "Oh, it is so  _delightful_ to see my boys getting along," she gushed, saturated with sarcasm. "I have every hope that you two will become the absolute  _fleetest_  of friends, and not a single fear that one of you will one day angrily burn down my ship."

Gavin walked toward her, and there he was, fully in view, from the ridiculous knee-high boots he wore to the cape that gave his broad shoulders an intriguing, angular frame. The grin still danced across his face, and the way it pushed his shallow cheeks out by the top of his jaw... just... oh, Goddess; Nicolas finally remembered the  _real_  reason he once adamantly refused to travel with the warlock.

Truly, though he avoided thinking about it with an almost comical intensity, he knew that a prince of Thais had no business dallying with a common Witchwood warlock.

 

 

Gavin rolled his head, cracking his neck the way he knew Nicolas hated. "It just occurred to me," he told Ava, "that we're heading straight for Eldrion on this northwestern course."

"And?" She didn't seem impressed by his geographical prowess.

"And we should stop in Harakauna," he finished, a smirk creeping up his cheek. "It would quite diversify the...  _stock_  of folk our dear prince would meet on his illuminating voyage."

He knew her well enough to know that she was swallowing a chuckle as she turned to face the sea. "You have a point there," she said eventually. "As Thais has no beef with Harakauna, I don't see why we shouldn't shepherd my vessel into their waters."

Gavin glanced over at Nicolas for a split second, just long enough to see that furrowed blond brow and pinched pout he lived to provoke. His smile widened. "Unless Prince Nicolas chickens out, of course."

"Excuse me!" There was that snappy tenor. "I haven't the foggiest clue what you two are talking about, but I  _am_ right here, and I fully intend to follow through with the promise I made my brother."

A laugh sputtered from Ava's mouth. Gavin slapped a hand to his mouth to catch the snicker he couldn't contain.  _Oh, Underworld; he actually doesn't know about Harakauna. That's...!_

Nicolas threw his hands into the air like the prima donna he was. "Have you loons all caught the laughing sickness?"

Gavin took a deep breath and steadied himself. He shot Nicolas a smoldering look in the eye, the look they both knew he usually reserved for more private affairs. He bit his lower lip and slowly drew his teeth back before opening his mouth.

"Mutton."

Ava convulsed with laughter, and Gavin chortled along with her. Nicolas, never one to betray his confusion, made a noise of disgust and stormed away, his robes swishing behind him. Gavin loved that he could elicit that noise from Nicolas on command. He loved quite a lot of the ways Nicolas reacted to him, most of all that paramount, beet-red frustration no one but Gavin could stir. He loved... quite a lot of Nicolas' idiosyncrasies, the little ways in which the prince exaggerated even the smallest of his own emotions. Hundreds of years a Casanova among witches, and not one withering glare from his past could compare to the thrill Gavin felt whenever this crisp little prince...  _acknowledged_  him. He loved that thrill.

He did. He loved...

A thrill, he reminded himself, only attainable for the next forty to sixty years. He folded his arms, trying to shield himself from the chill suddenly buffeting his chest. A deep breath reminded him of the constancy of the sea, the persistence of the wind. That was all he was, and he knew it. An eternal breeze through the skirts of entertaining mortals.

An unaging warlock had no business falling for a mortal, human prince.

 

 

Nicolas was gone by the time she recovered from her hysterics. Gavin was still there, his arms crossed, looking much too pensive for his own good. Ava straightened out, rolled back her shoulders, and served him a firm punch on the arm.

"Ow!" He flinched, and she smirked.

"Learn to take a hit or two, you three-hundred-year-old baby," she jabbed, but there was gentleness deep in her words. She wondered if he could hear it.

"Maybe warn me before you intend to bruise me," he grumbled.

"Not all punches in life are gonna warn you before you get decked," she reminded him. "Anyway, Nicolas is bored. Go teach him a card game."

"But--"

"Do it." Ava lifted her decorative eyepatch, revealing her fully-functional second eye, and winked. "Captain's orders."

Gavin's cloak swelled behind him as he turned to follow Nicolas. "If I lose, I'm burning a hole in the jib."

"You'll be the one to mend it."

Ava watched Gavin fondly as he strode after Nicolas. There was nothing more for her to say. She turned back to face the bow and tightened the winch with which Nicolas had fussed earlier. Maybe she  _should_ set a new course for Harakauna. Word on the seas had it that shapeshifters frequented the town... and shapeshifting women were an especially alluring item Ava yearned to cross off her bucket list.

That was her business.


End file.
